Individuality. Creativity. Perception.

One of my clients recently asked me if I ever stop to think about what I have achieved.

I looked her dead in the eye and replied “no, I do not”.

Why? Because what I have achieved is irrelevant – what comes next is what matters most.

At one point in time the things I have achieved were things I wanted toachieve. In order to take from ‘wants’ to ‘haves’ I had to grow into the person that could make that happen. I had to expand my scope of learning, build new relationships and overcome fears. In the process of this growth, what was once relevant became no longer so.

I had to leave behind that which no longer served me.

To direct energy into what I have achieved only challenges my memory. In order to keep growing and achieving, my energy has to be directed into possibilities, challenging a creative space where I am free to explore the depths and widths of what is and more importantly – what may be.

And what may be excites me far too much to look back upon was has been.

Do you know who Sebastian Oreb is? Otherwise known as the Australian Strength Coach, Oreb is probably one of the most followed male trainers in Australia (just behind Commando Steve). He is a personal trainer, strength & conditioning coach and power-lifter training out of Base Gym in Sydney, where he currently works with high level athletes in the NRL & MMA.

In my opinion, Oreb is a gifted coach and social media personality. But what makes him special is that his hugely popular social media account (@australianstrengthcoach) is littered with hundreds of videos of people training! Big men lifting heavy shit. Little men lifting heavy shit. Women lifting heavy shit. And even the odd child here and there, lifting (relatively) heavy shit.

Now this might not seem like a big thing to those not familiar with the inner workings of the fitness industry, but to someone who has spent the last decade working in and studying the industry – this is huge.

Why, you may ask?

Because Oreb’s approach is to prove himself credible to his followers through his social media account. His training techniques, his philosophy and his skill in getting the best from his athletes is quantified in each and every video he posts. Unfiltered and unedited, Oreb’s videos show a real person achieving real milestones.

Now compare this to the myriad trainers who only post photos of themselves flexing, eating, posing or pushing supplements. These Instafitnesswankers (to use a Joshism) use their carefully crafted photo reel like a wartime propaganda machine, manipulating public perception into believing their way is the ‘right’ way and that to be (healthy, strong, happy blah blah blah…) you should buy their (eBook, video series, teabag, shake weight etc).

“You wanna buy a shakeweight?”

In a society where our attention span lasts only about eight seconds, these trainers unfortunately seem to have the market share, the money and the notoriety. The vast majority of exercising Australians don’t want to invest the time in searching for that which makes great trainers & strength coaches – credibility.

In my opinion, credibility in trainers can be demonstrated by:

The consistent, long term, positive results achieved by their clientele

Their openness about their practices and their failures

Their willingness to learn from their setbacks and

Having approaches that move with the science, not stuck in the dogma of yesteryear.

As the fitness industry grows and we see more and more trainers and coachesclimbing out of the wormholes that are our registered training organisations, it is imperative that our focus as a society shifts away from those who pose the best in their active-wear to those who pose the least risk in impacting our bodies and minds.

Let me preface this article by stating I totally respect the hustle Jack D (Jack Delosa, founder of The Entourage, BRW young rich list member) has undergone to achieve the business and financial success he has at his age. The man can certainly grind, and he has rightly earned his reputation as one of Australia’s best young businessmen.

Sentences like “Find balance between your head and your heart”, “Create the life you want”, “… mastery ofour path” and that age old question “Are you congruent and aligned with the work you do every day?” are thrown around – but to what avail? How can one take from these and quantify what they want to achieve in life? These high level concepts may resonate with the creative, artistic types, but for those who are more practical minded there is one word you need to know to be able to pull yourself out of your current situation: TRY.

Every entrepreneur was once just a guy or girl who tried. Don’t like your job? Try something different. The beauty of the world we live in is that you can literally earn money sitting in your underwear on the couch, beer (or wine) in hand.

Jack D talks about finding your purpose, spending time thinking 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, 3 years and even 1 year ahead and planning accordingly: Plan your vision. Plan your mission. Execute.

It’s a nice sentiment to promote but what if you don’t have a 20 year vision? What if you don’t know what you want to be doing in one year? What if all you know is that you want to be doing something, anything, different from what you’re doing now?

Try something new.

Want to sell interesting rocks you find on the street? Try it. Find some rocks and put them on eBay for a price. There are myriad different things you can try, so just try a bunch and see what happens.

Once you’ve found something you enjoy doing an interesting thing starts to happen – you spend even more time doing it. And when you spend more time doing something you spend more time thinking about it. Eventually, this development of ideas can (and usually will) turn into something more, leading you to easily being able to forecast what you want to do next and where you want to take your life. Suddenly you have gone from selling rocks you picked up off the street on eBay to creating rock sculptures you sell in art galleries.

You never know where your new hobbies and passions will take you.

Jack D was not wrong when he talked about focus and motivation, he just missed a step.

“Here are a couple of cheeky tips for those of you out there wanting to feel (and be) more successful in your endeavours…

1. Learn to say no to people2. Learn to ignore time wasters (and not feel bad about it)3. Learn to not give a f**k

The short version is thus: learning to say no to people allows you to say yes to the things YOU want to do. Learning to ignore time wasters (people/situations) allows you to increase the productivity value of your time, meaning you don’t even stop to invest energy in saying no – you just keep doing your thang, without distraction. Learning to not give a f**k is a challenging one because everybody likes to think all their stuff is all important all the time. It’s not. Learning to not give a f**k in this instance applies to not allowing the POTENTIAL outcome of a situation or action affect your decision to TAKE ACTION. In simpler words: don’t be stifled by paralysis. Take action and try not to give a f**k where it may end up because at the end of the day you’ve either won or learnt a lesson.

Boom. Now get out there and succeed you legends.”

I received a fair bit of positive feedback for this post both online and off. The thing is, it seemed people needed to hear it. The timing was right, the message was on point and I like to think it tells it like it is.

Thinking through this a little further today, there are a couple of more tips for success I would like to add to the above. It’s all well and good to get you all hype and rah-rah over the above tips, but what does implementation actually look like in play?

Success Tips 2.1

Learn to grind

Play the long game

Don’t dismiss people

The short version here is thus: You have to learn to grind. You have to learn that to be successful you don’t have a watch now. You don’t have ‘spare time’, or ‘work time’ – you just have ‘time’. What you do with that time is now what matters most. Grind, focus on the things that will help you get where you want to go and pursue them relentlessly. The next two tips (playing the long game and not dismissing people) are two tips I have taken directly from Tim Ferriss (author of The Four Hour Work Week) but are tips which I have unknowingly been using my entire business life. You have to settle into your groove and recognise that success will not come quickly. To be successful – in anything – takes time. It takes continual failures and continual improvement. It takes effort, and energy, and money, and emotion – and if you have not got the long vision and focus for what it is you actually want to achieve, success (if any) can only ever be fleeting.

Finally, do not dismiss people. Every single person you meet has friends, family members and acquaintances that have the capacity to help you achieve your goals. I strongly believe in the power of the human being, and part of that power comes from the sense of wanting to help others succeed. I have invested many hours and much time in building genuine, strong relationships with many, many people over the years, and it is only through a combination of my own grind and their willingness to help me achieve my goals do I find myself in the position I am in today. The absolute key with this though is that you must be genuine in your approach – there is no good in building relationships purely for the use of exploiting them for your own success in the future. Sacrifice never wins, whereas collaboration will always win.

I am sure there is much more I can write on this topic but for now I wish to keep it short and sweet, and I hope this post has provided just that little bit extra for you to begin going out and really working towards what it is you want to achieve in the world.

After yesterday’s first ‘short thoughts’ post I was a little taken back by some of the comments and text messages of support I received, so thank you to all who took the time to read it and get in touch.

But let’s be honest – holding fears around publishing some writing doesn’t really rank up there on the scales of ‘fears you should get over’, so I’m not writing this one based around overcoming a fear of blog-publishing.

The fears I want to discuss are those that paralyse us from action and keep us locked into situations or experiences that detract from our happiness: Think staying in a shit job or spending time with draining friends as examples.

From what I have found, the easiest and quickest ways to overcome fears is to first:

Rationalise them (as much as you can) and then

Face them

Try and delve deep into what the underlying message behind the fear is, before taking the step to face it head on. Is leaving the shit job what you fear, or is it a fear based around not being able to earn money? Do you fear what your friends will say if you stop associating with them, or do you fear not being able to find more friends?

Whatever it is, be honest with yourself to work out the message behind the fear and then rationalise that message to yourself. Are there ways you can earn money outside of your job? Are there other circles you can begin to move in, or interest groups you can join with people with similar interests? Of course you can. A lot of the time, our fears are based around our perceptions of what we think may happen and not what actually happens.

The second step then is to face that fear (starting small).

You fear not being able to earn money outside of your shit job? Take a second job or start a little side business and watch other money start to roll in. You fear being friendless and alone? Join some local interest groups or begin to associate with new, positive people and see the fear of loneliness slip away.

More often than not our fears are based around what we see, hear and filter from our environment and not what happens in reality. We underestimate the human spirit and the power we have to seek what we wish to attain. Those who seek more generally attain more, and this is true for everything from energy and friendships to money and power.

Try it for yourself – what are you fearing at the moment, and what is the deeper message you are telling yourself?

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t released a (proper) blog publicly since August last year, and I’ve boiled it down to two things:

Fear

Cognitive load

I have been writing a fair bit of stuff privately (and have even been giving presentations on the things I have written) but when it comes time to publish something here – I pull out, fearful of what people might say or how they may react. The reason for this is that what I have been writing about is not any longer primarily fitness based, but more lifestyle and opinion based – comments on things I see and hear in the world around me – and opening myself up to this type of scrutiny is something I haven’t felt comfortable doing, not until this point anyway.

The second part of why I haven’t published anything since August is what I am calling cognitive load – I have had a huge amount of work going on with the studio and entertainment businesses that I just have not wanted to invest the time in writing, editing, re-writing and releasing anything with fleshy substance and then dealing with the plethora of comments, discussions and follow-ups that inevitably occur post-publishing.

Lately though, I have started to shift things in my head. I have started to ask myself about the things in life that I wish to do and asking myself why or how I am going to start working towards these things. Publishing blogs is one of those things. So what I have decided to do is release a series of posts I shall title ‘Short Thoughts’ – short thoughts (~300 to 500 words) on the things I think about or see and wish to comment on. The (working) titles of a few ideas I already have written down are:

Why I hate email

Investing vs manifesting (and why you should invest)

Why comfortable will kill you

How I made $150,000 in my spare time and

Why I get up at 4:30am to write blogs

My reasoning behind the titles is mainly to short-circuit the mental software that keeps telling me I don’t have the ‘time’ to write blogs and get my ideas out there – I have the time, I just have to prioritise it better.

And that fear thing? Fuck it. I’ve realised I cannot let myself be paralysed by the fear of something that may or may not occur. I’d rather throw some ideas out there and see how they stick, and if they don’t – That’s a lesson learned.

So bear with me, thank you all for your patience thus far and you’ll be hearing from me again soon.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for my blog, and it’s telling to see the stats. Check them out below, and being the competitive bastard that I am I shall be aiming to double all these stats come the end of 2016, whilst still providing some top quality insight into my mind.

Game on, Josh Mitise…

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,200 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.